EVENTS

At the King Fahd Hospital in Jeddah

The doctors have again said Raif should not be whipped tomorrow, Amnesty reports.

The planned flogging of Raif Badawi is likely to be suspended this Friday after a medical committee assessed that he should not undergo a second round of lashes on health grounds. The committee, comprised of around eight doctors, carried out a series of tests on Raif Badawi at the King Fahd Hospital in Jeddah yesterday and recommended that the flogging should not be carried out.

Nothing surprising about the assessment – deep cuts caused by repeated blows of a stick would of course not heal completely in two weeks.

“Instead of continuing to torment Raif Badawi by dragging out his ordeal with repeated assessments the authorities should publicly announce an end to his flogging and release him immediately and unconditionally,” said Said Boumedouha, Deputy Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Programme.

“Raif Badawi is still at risk, there is no way of knowing whether the Saudi Arabian authorities will disregard the medical advice and allow the flogging to go ahead.”

The authorities should release him immediately and unconditionally and let him leave the country and join his wife and children in Québec.

Comments

I hope the doctors continue to rule that he is physically unfit for his “sentence” – forever. Much the way most doctors in the US will refuse to participate in executions or in propping up victims of torture just so that military torturers can have more fun with them. Notice my use of “most”. It should be “ALL”. I only hope that the Saudi doctors will quietly and passively mount this resistance campaign, since in that fascist regime speaking out publicly would be suicide (and not necessarily of the euphemistic kind).

Well, short of cessation and release and permission to leave, yes, but still, that’a hellish situation. The Saudis can just ignore the medics if they feel like it, and the suspense would be horrendous. They need to release him and let him leave the pestilential country.